Burberry Prorsum autumn/winter 2014 collection at London Fashion Week

Burberry paints the town red (and blue and orange and every other colour) at London Fashion Week

BY Luke Leitch |
17 February 2014

For those who relish spotting stars - celebrities, not celestials - this week's conjunction of
the Baftas,
the Brits and
London's fashion collections
all aligned perfectly at Burberry's autumn fashion show.

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Look, there was the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein chummily hailing the Hollywood star Bradley Cooper. Cooper was just settling into his seat next to US Vogue's Anna Wintour to watch his heart-faced fashion model girlfriend, Suki Waterhouse, make her debut on Burberry's catwalk.

The Venn circles of music, film and fashion overlapped everywhere: on stage, 2013 Brits nominee Paloma Faith, wearing Burberry, belted out a song called Only Love Can Hurt Like This (which had some pretty painful high notes). Also on the front row were Harry Styles and Tinie Tempah (music) Felicity Jones and Naomie Harris (film).

This gawper's paradise of a catwalk show was beamed live by internet stream to Boston, Beijing and beyond, so had been due to begin at precisely 2pm. However even Christopher Bailey, Burberry's CEO and chief creative officer, cannot control the traffic on the Bayswater Road.

The fashion at last took centre stage as Matilda Lowther emerged in Bailey's first look of the show, a narrow-belted flowing dress in cotton silk that snagged the eye via an irregular hem and its hand-painted decoration. This was Burberry does bohemian; slouchy trench-coats, shearling jackets, and enswathing Chesterfields all came splashed with brushstrokes.

A new handbag called the Bloomsbury featured more painterly decoration, as did the wickedly heeled Edwardian-shaped shoe-boots. There were menswear looks too - a reprise of January's just-as-arty string vest collection.

The boys were cast aside for the finale, though, when the models re-emerged swathed in blankets. The fashion nerds spotted instantly that Bailey's proto-modern art references sometimes resembled the pattern in last September's collection by Céline, the Paris house that new-clothes know-it-alls love to declare is
le dernier cri.